Hi Greg and a.l.e., On 12/12/08, a.l.e <ale.comp_06 at xox.ch> wrote: > hi >> I think the bottom line is that you have exhausted our knowledge of >> all this. >> We have had some contact from people in the past suggesting that there >> are efforts to create some open fonts in various Indic languages. It >> may be worth trying to see if you can find these people for their >> contacts and information, how they managed to get started. >> Perhaps fontforge has some users who are working on related fonts. Do >> they have any forums? > iirc at the last LGM in wroclaw there were people who are developping > free fonts for asiatic languages. iirc correctly they were sleeping in > the same dorm as i was :-) > > > looking at the LGM program should tell who they are (iirc at least one > of them had a speach which i missed)
I have not yet found anyone who is developing a FREE, but high quality, Urdu Nastaleeq font. The only quality font that I have found so far is "Traditional Arabic" (or, perhaps, "Simplified Arabic" or something like that) from Microsoft but since Arabic does not have some very common Urdu Alphabets - so, Arabic fonts cannot be used for Urdu publications. The basic Naskh fonts are easy to design using font designing software but I really wonder how the complex script "Nastaleeq" fonts would be designed as Urdu alphabets change shapes when joined and sometimes they get below the baseline, sometimes _on_ the baseline and sometimes above the baseline. The same alphabet is written differently based on context. I think that the font itself should have some kind of a programming support - the font should know as to *how* it has to render the next character in the document and that whether it's going below the baseline, above the baseline or on the baseline. Any more helpful comments? -Asif
